Jury begins deliberations in Rockland murder trial

A Plymouth County jury began deliberating Monday after hearing closing arguments in the murder trial of Orlando Kavanaugh and Terrell Nicholas, the two men accused of planning a 2011 Rockland home invasion that ended with the shooting death of 36-year-old Tina Gonsalves.

By Neal Simpson

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

By Neal Simpson

Posted Jun. 25, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 25, 2013 at 11:44 AM

By Neal Simpson

Posted Jun. 25, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Jun 25, 2013 at 11:44 AM

BROCKTON

» Social News

After two weeks of often-inconsistent testimony, 12 jurors must decide whether they can trust the words of a man who admitted to leaving his apartment to hide evidence while his mother lay bleeding to death in the living room.

The Plymouth County jury began deliberating Monday after hearing closing arguments in the murder trial of Orlando Kavanaugh and Terrell Nicholas, the two men accused of planning a 2011 Rockland home invasion that ended with the shooting death of 36-year-old Tina Gonsalves. Deliberations were expected to continue this morning.

Like much of the trial, Monday’s closing arguments focused largely on the credibility of Gonsalves’ younger son, Aaron Dorsett, who told police he was sleeping in the living room of the family’s Concord Street apartment when Kavanaugh broke into the house armed with a handgun. Police say Kavanaugh ran out of the house after Dorsett shot him and was driven to a Brockton emergency room in a pickup truck driven by Nicholas.

Nicholas’ attorney, David Sorrenti, sought to paint Dorsett as a “pathological liar” who lied to prosecutors for two years about where he got the gun he used to shoot the intruder, giving them a false story even after they agreed not to charge him for illegally possessing it. In his own testimony two weeks ago, Dorsett acknowledged that he did not tell the truth about the gun until the day before the trial was to begin.

Kavanaugh’s attorney, Robert Griffin, suggested that Dorsett may have lied about the armed robbery as well, saying it was “equally likely” that Kavanaugh had come to the house to buy marijuana when Dorsett decided “to take Mr. Kavanaugh off.”

“He lied to police, he lied to the grand jury and he lied to you,” Griffin said. “The man is allergic to the truth.”

In his closing statement, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Flanagan acknowledged that Dorsett had lied frequently to investigators, but he told jurors they could rely on Dorsett’s testimony because his account of the shooting was supported by corroborating evidence, including ballistics evidence from the home. He reminded the jury that Kavanaugh’s blood was found in the Gonsalves home and the truck Nicholas had rented.

“I’m not asking you to take Aaron Dorsett on his word,” he told the jury.

The defense, however, sought to raise doubts about investigators’ interpretation of some evidence, including a series of text messages that police said showed Kavanaugh and Nicholas discussing their plans for robbing the Gonsalves family.

In one exchange, Kavanaugh is alleged to have asked, “When we moving?’’ to which Nicholas allegedly replied, “like @sunrise b4 the crackers get up,” followed by, “or we can do it sooner!”

Griffin called the text messages “cryptic” and said it wasn’t clear what they were about. He argued that the term “cracker” – a pejorative for white people – didn’t seem to apply to Gonsalves and her family.

Page 2 of 2 - Sorrenti also urged jurors to consider the evidence against the two men separately, noting that the prosecution had offered no evidence tying Nicholas to the scene of the shooting. He told jurors that the fact that Nicholas had rented the pickup truck seen leaving Gonalves’ apartment did not mean he was necessarily the one driving it the night of the shooting.

“They cannot put a person behind the wheel of that truck,” he said.

Flanagan, however, reminded jurors that Nicholas had abandoned the rented pickup in Dorchester after the shooting and disappeared for three months, failing even to contact his girlfriend. Flanagan pointed to the testimony of a relative who said Nicholas called shortly after the shooting asking for bus money to help him get out of town.

“What does that tell you, when a man leaves everything?” he asked the jury.